José Luis Appleyard

José Luis Appleyard (5 May 1927 – 1998) was a Paraguayan poet, playwright, lawyer, journalist and publisher.

Childhood and youth

He was born in Asunción, the capital city of Paraguay.

He completed his primary studies in "la Escuela Normal de Profesores". He attended high school at the Colegio de San José de Asunción, but finished at Colegio San Martín in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

He studied law at Universidad Nacional de Asunción and after graduating, he worked as a poet lawyer for approximately ten years. After this, he decided to dedicate himself to journalism and poetry.

First steps

He was one of the favourite disciples of César Alonso de las Heras, a priest in Colegio de San José. Father Alonso is a fundamental figure regarding the diffusion of Spanish poetry of what are called the '98 and '27 generations. He was also the mentor of numerous talented poets and writers, first from the Academia Literaria del Colegio de San José, and then from the Academia Universitaria, being president and active referent of this last.

Appleyard was part of the so-called "fifties generation" in Paraguayan poetry, along with other icons like José María Gómez Sanjurjo, Ricardo Mazó and Ramiro Domínguez, amongst others.

For almost two decades, he was part of the body of journalists for the La Tribuna newspaper of Asunción. He was also "Boss of the Culture Area" and director of the cultural supplement published on Sundays. He was the editor of "Monólogos", an important column which influenced people and achieved great popularity by writing about subjects of interest at the time, such as "how people speak in Paraguay". Likewise, he worked in Ultima Hora, the newspaper where his column, "Desde el tiempo que vivo", was one of the most anticipated by the thousands of readers.

Being invited by many countries, such as the United States of America and Germany, amongst others, he visited numerous nations in which he gave conferences, and presented his poems.

Trajectory

He was President of the PEN Club del Paraguay and served as the secretary of Academia Paraguaya de la Lengua Española.

The poet and literary critic Roque Vallejos wrote in the epilogue of his book, "José-Luis Appleyard - Antología poética", which was published in 1996: "...He has poems of notable social sarcasm that Rafael Barrett would have wanted to include in his "Moralidades actuales". So as in his poem "Hay un sitio" que that states in one of its fragments: There are synonyms clear, translucent: / being free is growing without will / to steal is to rob, love is hate, / and to live is to die defenceless / loneliness is called company/ and betraying is to be loyal to your friends. / The news are old. All that's new/ has a dark old shining. Discreetly and with no violence, Appleyard faithfully and severely describes the state of spiritual and semantic emptiness of the words and the trapped feeling that the dictatorship carried within for more than thirty years. A poet that has based all his pieces on freedom couldn't - nor has tried to do so - defend a dogmatic moral that would have fatally led him to "mere materialist doctrinism".

Hugo Rodríguez-Alcalá, a Paraguayan literature investigator wrote in his book "Appleyard da a la estampa"... the best in his promotion:... Amongst those of the Academia Universitaria, Appleyard is the one who best fulfills the following subjects: the longing for lost times, the teen love, and the magic of childhood. All these subjects are mentioned in "Entonces era siempre", anthology of poems in which the poet reviews childhood".

Style

Appleyard himself, in a brief script of June 1981 that introduces his book "Tomado de la mano", expresses the following in relation to his poems:

Distinctions

In 1961 he won the Municipal Award of Theater with the poetic drama about the Paraguayan independence, "Aquel 1811".

In 1997, he received Paraguay's National Prize for Literature for his book Cenizas de la vida.

Last years

He died in Asunción in 1998.

Works

Even though he has written many other brief pieces, most of his theatrical production remains inedited.

Year Pieces1953"Poesía", junto a otros miembros de la Academia Universitaria. 1963El poemario "Entonces era siempre", su primer libro (1963).1965"El sauce permanece" (1965),1978"Así es mi Nochebuena". 1981book featuring the poem "Cigarra, tonta cigarra", magnificently musicalizad by Maneco Galeano, "Tomado de la mano".1982"El labio y la palabra".1983"Solamente los años. 1965 En narrativa es autor de una novela: "Imágenes sin tierra" 1971"Los monólogos"1983"La voz que nos hablamos"

Year last publications1988"Las palabras secretas", un poemario. 1993"Desde el tiempo que vivo", a series of sixty short poems regarding the most important events of the second millennium of the Christian era, book that attributed the award Premio Municipal de Literatura in 19941997For his last book, Cenizas de la vida, he was awarded with the highest in Paraguayan literature paraguayas, Premio Nacional de Literatura that the Parlamento Paraguayo trusted to him the same year.